Introduction
As a primary-level teacher, I am responsible for creating a classroom that operates as a community, where everyone’s voice included in the day-to-day environment and provides opportunities for students to learn through literature, science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Key components of our school theme include problem solving and the understanding that social-emotional learning is integral to academic learning. This six-week unit will provide my students the opportunity to build a classroom community and to develop their vision of the responsibilities of each citizen within that community.
Edgewood Magnet School is a Kindergarten through eighth grade school in New Haven where I teach in a self-contained classroom. I find the neighborhood/magnet setting a rewarding environment, with students coming to school each day from a variety of home circumstances and with differences in academic levels. As a result of these variables, the children have differing levels of background knowledge and life experiences. The classroom is a mixture of varied ethnicities, economic strata and social and emotional strengths and weaknesses. The use of collaboration allows all students at all levels to learn in an inherently differentiated environment, learning new concepts and experiencing the hands-on practices and demonstrations in this curriculum unit on understanding how we will all work together. Throughout the school year, the Kindergarten curriculum focuses heavily on social development. Our school staff is currently mandated to develop rich curriculum that supports our new S.T.E.A.M. focus, with support through social/emotional programs. This unit will be in direct alignment with my responsibility to design curriculum that helps our students learn social and community responsibility.
Young children often have a natural inclination to problem-solve through fairness. But the question arises, what is fairness? How is equity determined and by whom? This unit introduces a variety of governmental structures with the plan for students to role-play each as we organize and determine the rules of classroom. They will explore monarchy, anarchy, dictatorship, communism and finally, democracy with the hope that they will discover the advantages of governing through a core set of values, combining individual choice and equal opportunity, and striving for the common good.
Within the set of compelling questions in the Connecticut Social Studies Framework for young learners are: How do we learn about people from the past? How do past actions of people in our community still influence our community today? What historical sources can we study from the past? (1) Teaching younger students about our nation’s history and how the United States government works is quite challenging, explaining the big ideas of freedom, justice and civil rights. The essential questions, What makes a good citizen? What makes a good leader? How do members of a community help each other? Why do we need rules? provide some specific context as we explore these grand ideas.
The unit begins with the reading of two foundation-setting picture books: Let’s Chat about Democracy: Exploring Forms of Government in a Treehouse by Michelle A. Balconi and We the Kids: The Preamble of the Constitution of the United States by David Catrow. The first text tells the story of a group of friends sharing a giant treehouse recently built in a new town park and their need to find a fair and just way for everyone to enjoy access to and activities in the treehouse. With subtle guidance and suggestions from an ever-present park gardener and caretaker, Mrs. Quinn, the children explore experiences with monarchy, anarchy, dictatorship and communism only to find that these options lack freedom and choice. Through their own experiences the children decide that democracy is the best form of governing the treehouse. The second book is as the title describes, an approachable look at the Preamble that helps students with the difficult language and introduces an awareness of our Constitution.
This unit provides knowledge about the democratic system along with an opportunity for my students to decide how our classroom might run like a democracy. They will work like the founding fathers to create an age-appropriate, student-designed constitution that will guide our classroom throughout the year.
Comments: